molten gold
by constellation way
Summary: golden eyes are a difficult thing to forget. also: Steve and Bucky run into a kid with solid gold eyes in 1940s New Orleans, and she's a special thing with a special place in their hearts, and she's got a heart of gold and full of goodness, and Steve's never going to forget Hazel Levesque, no matter what. [oneshot]


**Hello guys! I know I really should be working on my other stories but this idea popped up into my head today and I just _had_ to get it down after I finished up my exam. I'm not sure if there are any other stories like these (there probably are lol but oh well) but I really hope you enjoy this! Had a lot of fun writing it; I really love Hazel and I really like Steve Rogers, though if I make any mistakes with Hazel's character, I'm real sorry, it's been a long while since I read any of the books, what with being in the midst of finals and all. Also, I've got so many half-written Avengers and Captain America stories and whatnot and it felt like such a shame! That I've never posted any of them even though I love the movies (yeah I've never read the comics)! So here it is.**

 **Also I'm not even sure if this is historically possible or anything but let's just pretend it is and go with it?**

 **And! I promise to get back to my other stories once finals are over! I know, I'm really bad at continuing and ending my stories; I'm sorry!**

 **Anyway, really hope you like this!**

* * *

Golden eyes are a difficult thing to forget. If they merely flicker gold in a certain light, or have a golden shine to them out of happiness, they are much easier to push to the back of the mind, much more easily forgotten, gathering dust in a corner of your mind. But golden eyes, solid gold that stare out at you with so much expression – they are another thing entirely.

Steve doesn't think he'd ever forget golden eyes like those.

They're in New Orleans, him and Bucky, a quick stop-off before another mission for Captain America and the Howling Commandos. They're lucky, to get stop-offs like these every once in a while. Usually they are just shuttled back and forth between London and wherever their next mission is, but when London is too far out of the way, anywhere with a decent military base or camp is good enough.

Hence why they are in New Orleans, when they run across the dark-skinned, golden-eyed girl being shoved around and laughed at in an alleyway.

It literally takes seconds for Bucky and Steve to run up, the same way they've always done back when they were kids and even when both of them had grown up – only usually, it's Steve getting shoved around and Bucky running to intervene, and it feels a little strange to be the one intervening in an alley fight this time, but he does it anyway. Because the little girl looks far too small for the nasty names being yelled at her, the shoving and the pushing and the sneers pushing at her relentlessly, the bottles and rocks being thrown at her, and her golden eyes staring at them as if she thinks she deserves it.

This sends a wave of righteous fury rising up in Steve. _No one_ deserves to be treated like this. Especially not in a gang of four to one.

"Hey," Bucky snaps, marching forward into the fray, "what d'you kids think you're doing?"

"Showing the witch what for," says one of the kids, tall, burly, brawny, and brainless-looking – almost a miniature version of Gilmore Hodge, Steve thinks to himself, as the kid turns to glare at Bucky. He doesn't see Steve right away, dark as the alleyway is, with the blond man standing just behind his best friend; no one quite knows just yet that Captain America is in these parts, and he'd like to keep it that way a little while longer, and Bucky's got more than enough experience handling situations like this, though Steve wants, so badly, to pull the battered-looking girl away from these kids, wants to wrap her up in a blanket and give her tea and make sure she's doing okay. "She's cursed, she is," and the kid spits at her feet, turns to look properly at Bucky: "Who're you, anyway?"

Of course, Steve thinks. They're in civilian clothes, and they're clearly not locals. Of course these kids don't know who they are, are going to be suspicious.

Steve can feel Bucky tensing up in front of him. "The name's Sergeant James Barnes, of the Howling Commandos," he says, fists clenching, "and leave the kid alone."

"No way!" One of the other kid's eyes widens in disbelief: "That's Captain America's team!"

"It is," Bucky agrees, and turns: "And Steve hates bullies, doesn't he?"

"I became a soldier to stop bullies, Bucky, what d'you think?" says Steve, stepping out now, and he sees the eyes widening, the gasps, the soft curses coming out from beneath their breaths as they realise that they have, indeed, run into Captain American and his Sergeant Barnes: "Now why don't you kids run off and leave the girl alone?"

Steve won't stoop down to beating kids up, but he's not above hauling them out on their asses, not to mention marching them home to make sure their parents know _exactly_ what they've been up to. That, with the knowledge that they've royally pissed off the nation's biggest hero at the moment, is enough to get them to leave the poor girl alone, he hopes.

"Yessir," comes a mumbled chorus as the kids scatter, slipping through the two soldiers and running as fast and as far as their legs can take them; and when they've watched the last kid turn the corner, Steve turns back to face the little girl and his best friend.

"Don't touch that!" the girl cries, suddenly, and before Steve can say anything, she swoops to the ground, and she scoops up something green and shining – is that an _emerald_? – before Bucky is even halfway to it. "It's cursed," she mutters, looking away and at her feet and then back up at them again, and Steve can see, from her face, that she truly believes it is cursed. "They – they pop up around me sometimes and when people take them they get hurt. That's why they call me a witch," she says, quietly, and she looks back down again and then up at them, and Steve feels sadness overwhelming him as he realises that she truly _does_ believe she is cursed and that she deserves getting shoved around, her golden eyes meeting theirs: "Thank you for stopping them."

It's said so quietly, with such genuine sincerity, that Steve cannot help but smile back, even though he's not sure about this story of cursed stones popping up from the ground.

"I've never liked bullies," Steve tells her, and gold eyes look back at him – like molten gold, he marvels, a solid chunk of it melted down, glowing and shimmering in whatever little light there is in the alleyway. "You can ask Bucky here. I was always getting beaten up by bullies."

"I was the one saving him before he became Captain America," Bucky supplies, helpfully, and he bends down slightly to the girl's height: "We haven't introduced ourselves properly, have we? I'm James, but everyone calls me Bucky. This here's Steve."

The girl smiles, shyly, and it's like her whole face lights up a little. "My name's Hazel," she tells them; and then she pauses, asks, cautiously: "Are you really Captain America?"

"Why do all the pretty dames know you and not me?" says Bucky, with a dramatic sigh, and the girl giggles as Bucky squats down next to her on the murky ground, never minding the mud splatters and dirt that's getting on his boots and pants. "Such a horrible tragedy! I'm heartbroken! I'm turning invisible!"

Steve rolls his eyes at his friend's antics, smiles and squats down in front of the girl: "That's right," he tells her. "I'm Captain America. But you can call me Steve."

"That wouldn't be right," the girl says, eyes widening slightly in a kind of horrified disbelief.

"Well, you could call him Mr Steve," Bucky suggests, sending a shit-eating grin Steve's way, "and you can call me Mr Bucky. How about that?"

The girl frowns for a moment, and then she smiles, a brilliant smile: "Okay," she says.

* * *

They stop by New Orleans every once in a while, and Bucky and Steve like to go find 'their little friend', as the rest of the Howling Commandos call Hazel, whenever they can. Sometimes they find her just wandering around, sometimes hiding in alleyways from a wide range of bullies ready to target her, sometimes they find her staring longingly at the stables that she can't ever enter. Sometimes they find her walking away from bullies with her head low, and even when Bucky wants to run after them and give them a talking-to and get their asses out in front of their mothers, Hazel just shakes her head and tells him that that's not very nice, and that it's all right.

It's not a lie. She truly believes it. Steve knows that she wonders why they can be so cruel, but she accepts them bullying her as a part of life and she doesn't want them hurt.

He doesn't know what he's angrier about – the fact that she's getting bullied because of stupid rumours, or the fact that her being bullied is just a norm, a fact of life, the same way that the grass is green and the sky is blue.

Somehow, they always find her whenever they wander around. They just do. They found her mother's shop, just once, a sign advertising fortune-telling, but Hazel seemed adamant not to go in, though she'd reluctantly agreed after Bucky had said that he had always wanted his fortune told.

Which, Steve knows, is kind of a lie. Bucky doesn't really believe in fortune-telling, but he's interested enough to see how it'll go. But Steve knows, just as Bucky knows that he knows, that all Bucky really wants to do is find out what kind of mother would let her kid be beaten up almost every day and not even realise it.

Bucky finds out soon enough, of course, and only shakes his head at Steve when he leaves the shop a while later after his session with Queen Marie, without Hazel seeing. And they make it their mission, the two of them, to keep Hazel happy and bully-free and they look out for her, the good kid that she is, and they have her back.

* * *

One of the times they find her hiding from her would-be bullies, Steve and Bucky pull her aside, make her sit down with them to talk.

"You've got to remember this, Hazel," says Steve Rogers. "These bullies – don't let them walk all over you. Don't ever let them feel that you're worth nothing, that you deserve this."

"But I _do_ ," the girl says, quietly. "I'm cursed."

"No, you're not," Bucky tells her.

"You're really not," Steve agrees. "You're a girl who's got some pretty bad luck in life, and that's okay. Life will throw difficult things your way, but you've got to remember that you're strong. Do what you know is right, and push for what you believe is just and fair. If you know something is wrong, speak out against it, and don't let people walk all over you or ever make you think that you deserve any of this bullying or pain."

"You've got to keep heart," says Bucky. "Fight for what you believe is right and never let people make you think that you deserve to be hurt like this. Gotta be brave."

"You're one of the kindest people I've ever met," Steve tells her. "You're kind to the people who do you wrong and you don't want to see them hurt, and I can respect that, admire that – "

"Don't let them walk all over you, though," interrupts Bucky, and Steve thinks of how he wishes maybe had been a bit more like Hazel, before: being compassionate, not always looking for a fight – but then, he's always been a fighter, standing up for himself, and Hazel…Hazel thinks she deserves it.

"Fight for what you know is right," says Steve. "For what you know is fair and just and good. Don't ever let anyone make you feel as if you're worthless or deserve to be hurt. You're the only one who's got that power, and you're stronger than all of them combined."

Hazel looks down at her shoes and sniffs, and they can both hear the quiet "Thank you" that comes from her mouth.

* * *

They find out that she likes art, and Steve's like an excited little puppy, Bucky thinks, eagerly teaching her what he knows about art. Bucky knows that the blond kid's always regretted, just a little, not being able to finish art school, but he'd give it all up over again in a heartbeat to serve his country.

But art's good for Steve, it's always been there for him. And now he's teaching it to this little girl with eyes of molten gold, listening intently to every word that Steve says, absorbing, learning, processing, and Bucky thinks that maybe running into Hazel Levesque wasn't just good for her but for Steve as well.

She meets Dum Dum Dugan and the rest of the Howling Commandos, one day, when they're scouting the place for any good bars and Bucky and Steve are escorting Hazel back to her house. It is a wonder, Bucky thinks, that no one's ever made any fuss about two grown men bringing a little girl around, but then he remembers; Hazel's said that no one likes her. No one cares.

There's a strange, twisting feeling in his chest, and he has to swallow down the sadness and anger that's risen up. Because he cares. Because Steve cares. And as the Howling Commandos reach them and start to greet the little girl, he knows, fiercely, that they care, too.

"Well, missy, you must be Miss Hazel," says Dum Dum Dugan, bending down so that he can reach Hazel's height and shaking her hand. "We've heard a lot about you from Captain and ol' Jimmy here."

The girl lets out something that sounds like a nervous squeak, turns to look at Bucky and Steve, eyes wide: "You have?"

"All good things," Gabe Jones says, and Bucky can see how catching sight of him seems to calm Hazel down; the tension in her shoulders drop slightly, the fingers clutching tightly to her sketchpad and pencil loosen their grip just a little, and she smiles shyly at Jones as he continues in that soothing tone of voice: "Said you were one of the nicest girls they've ever met."

"Mr Steve," says Hazel, reproachfully, "what d'you tell 'em?"

"Why me? It could've been Bucky," says Steve.

Hazel pauses, looks at them both, shakes her head. "Mr Bucky _wouldn't_ ," she says, and Bucky claps his hand onto Steve's shoulder, grinning.

"You got that absolutely right," he says to Hazel, and she beams at them both.

"You're a brave kid," Jim Morita tells her, and Hazel doesn't even blink, doesn't even step back, at the sight of his Asian features; just peers at him curiously, waiting for him to continue speaking, and Bucky remembers Steve telling the Commandos, indignantly, about a bunch of kids beating up a little girl just because of rumours that she was 'cursed': "Putting up with the Captain and Barnes takes a lot of courage", and Hazel's face breaks into a wide smile.

"We have to do it nearly every day and we're absolutely exhausted," says Falsworth, and Dernier nods, agreeing, chattering something in French that Bucky doesn't quite get.

Hazel laughs, a tinkling laugh that soothes Bucky's heart.

* * *

Sometimes, Steve draws for her, little things that make her smile – animals that walk around, buildings that tower into the sky, places that once existed but were now turning into ash around them as the world falls apart. Sometimes his drawings are Steve's way of coping with the world, and Bucky watches as he gives some of his precious drawings to the little girl with golden eyes, which widen in disbelief every time she receives one.

"Are you sure?" Hazel wants to know, when Steve offers her the first one.

"Of course I'm sure," Steve says, firmly. "I'm giving it to you right now, aren't I?"

Her eyes light up when she takes each drawing, and Bucky watches as she carefully stows them away, keeps them carefully, and turns back to the two men, beaming.

"They're lovely," she tells Steve, and gives him a hug; and she gives Bucky a hug, too, even though the sergeant tells her that he hasn't done anything, not like Steve over here.

"You're very nice people," she says to them, when she pulls away, and she smiles at them: "You're very nice people and you're always here for me and you've done so many things for me and you're wonderful."

She isn't, say, particularly talented in drawing just yet, but she gives them sketches of her hometown and rough sketches of what is supposed to be the three of them.

"I hope you don't forget me," she tells them, shyly, when she gives them over, burying her face in her hands immediately afterwards.

"We wouldn't ever forget you," Bucky promises.

* * *

One day, they come to New Orleans and they can't find her anywhere, and they end up going to Marie Levesque's shop, now closed and boarded up and about to be sold to someone new, and Steve tries to wrap his head around what happened because they were just _here_ and now she's gone? And Bucky can't quite understand it, either, and he just stares blankly at the empty building in front of them.

They stand in front of the shop for a long time, and then a voice calls them: "Hey! You Mr Bucky and Mr Steve?"

They turn around to see a scrawny-looking boy in a jockey cap walking up the street towards them, a face that looks like it has seen its fair share of devilish grins which have now faded away, who just looks tired and upset as he wanders up to them, kicking at the ground, and his attempts at a smile look forced and angry, and Bucky wonders who this kid is.

"Yeah," he says, and he clocks the boy's appearance and attire and the way he's drumming his fingers against his leg and adjusting his cap and giving off so much nervous energy, and tries: "Are you Sammy?"

This puts a little life into the boy; he straightens up, stops fidgeting, and looks at them, says, eyes wide: "Hazel talked about me?"

"You were one of the things she talked most about," Steve tells him, and a genuine smile breaks out on the boy's face, a really _happy_ one, and Steve wants to know: "What happened to her? Why isn't she here?"

At this, Sammy's smile fades, instantly.

"She left," he says, morosely, and his finger start tapping on his trousers again. Bucky's eyes are immediately drawn to them, and he realises, as he half-listens, half-watching watching Sammy's fingers, that there is a certain pattern to Sammy's drumming: "The day after her thirteenth birthday. Her mum packed up and brought her out to Alaska. She didn't even get to say goodbye."

Morse code, Bucky thinks, still looking at Sammy's hand. Same message, over and over.

 _I love you_.

And he absorbs the fact that Hazel has been packed off to Alaska without even a goodbye, and he's not going to see the little gold-eyed angel with the heart of gold again, and this boy in front of him looks like his heart's been ripped out to pieces, and there is a sickening, twisted, angry feeling in Bucky's chest.

Next to him, Steve's hand clenches around the package he's carrying: a new, high-quality sketchpad, and a box full of coloured pencils and proper drawing pencils and everything that a budding artist needs – a present from him and Bucky, for Hazel's thirteenth birthday, after the girl had accidentally let slip that she was so relieved to finally be turning thirteen and they'd gotten her birthday out of her. It's meant to be a surprise, a gift from them to her for being so welcoming and always finding a cupcake or something for them and for the rest of the Howling Commandos, for being such a genuine, compassionate person with a heart overflowing with love.

"Her mother just dragged her all over the place without warning?"

Sammy shakes his head: "No warning at all," he says, and his finger still drum out the repetitive pattern: "She wanted me to meet you two," he adds, looking over at them, and there is something genuine in his eyes, something that Bucky can't quite place: "And I wanted to meet you, too. To say thanks. For looking out for her when I couldn't."

Bucky knows that Steve has taken notice of the unintentional Morse code tapping the boy is doing. _I love you. I love you. I love you_.

"I guess you were both very important to each other," says Bucky.

A smile, a sad, broken-looking smile, twists Sammy's face: "Yeah. She's my best friend."

Steve thinks of the young, battered-looking girl with eyes of solid gold, and he remembers a brave and fair heart of gold, full of kindness and compassion even to her tormentors, and a smile that lights up the darkening night and so much goodness in a little girl that he never thought was possible.

"She's a good person," says Bucky.

* * *

When Steve Rogers wakes up from the ice, it takes a while for him to adjust. First he has to adjust to New York, to the technology, to the way that everything has caught up, and he spends hours on the Internet and at the library catching up on everything that is going on and figuring out how to use everything. He has to adjust to losing almost everyone he's ever known, everyone he's ever loved and cared for, knowing that he is alone now.

He looks through the files, swallows his grief – Jim Morita, Dernier, Falsworth, Dum Dum, Jones, Phillips, Bucky, Howard, so _many_ – and he looks at Peggy's file and she's still _alive_ , goddammit, but he can't bring himself to speak to her.

He's left her, all those years ago. She is an old woman now, having lived a full life, can he really just waltz back in and forget everything?

And then he thinks –

 _Hazel_.

Hazel Levesque, her eyes of solid gold staring up at him as she beams at him.

He can still see her in his mind's eyes – that wide smile, her curly explosion of hair, the way her eyes would grow large in happiness and surprise and disbelief, her gentle features and her kind heart and those golden, expressive eyes that said so much –

He still has that drawing she gave him, so long ago. It'd been stuffed into his boot, along with a picture of Bucky and him, and another picture with the Howling Commandos and another with Stark. He'd have liked a picture with Hazel, but she's always been so shy; he brought up the idea once and she'd look so horrified that Bucky had laughed himself silly and Steve had never brought it up again. It's still with him, a piece of his past just as everything else is.

He smoothens it out, stares at the crudely-drawn lines of a twelve-year-old who puts her entire heart and soul into what she does, who finds beauty and goodness in everything because she's just that kind of person.

There's a flicker of hope inside him.

Hazel was just twelve when he went into the ice – thirteen, really, but the point is, she was a kid and even after seventy years, she'd still be eighty-something at most, wouldn't she? There's a likelihood, a strong likelihood, that she's still alive, surrounded by adoring grandchildren with those same golden eyes and living a happy life to the fullest.

He has to find her.

* * *

It's a task, something to do, so Steve does it. He vaguely remembers Sammy Valdez and the kid mentioning Alaska, so he starts there, but first he stops and gets some research done on Sammy, courtesy of SHIELD and the remarkable amount of databases they have access to.

Unfortunately, he's interrupted in the middle of his search with an alien invasion, but the minute it's over he's back to trying to find out as much as he can about what happened to the golden-eyed girl. Tony finds out about his search and offers to help out, and, well, the guy's efficient and an absolute wizard with technology, so Steve reluctantly concedes the search over to Howard's son, though he keeps himself at Tony's side until the results pop up.

First he finds Sammy Valdez, and there's his heart hurts for a moment when he reads that the kid died eighteen or so years ago. Sammy Valdez seemed like a good kid, but Steve wonders why he never married Hazel, because he can still remember the _tap tap_ of the kid drumming out _I love you_ on his pants, across the street from the empty house that once held Hazel's smiles and laughter and sadness.

Stark looks up Hazel Levesque, next.

And then Steve's heart sinks, and it feels heavy, so heavy.

Disappeared in Alaska. Same year that she left.

 _She was only thirteen_ , he thinks, and he has to sit back heavily on Stark's expensive chair and breathe because, _goddammit_ , she never got to live, she never got to fall in love and marry and raise a family the way she always wanted, she never got to do something with her life apart from being pushed around in New Orleans.

She had Sammy, he reminds himself, and he remembers that Sammy was taken away from her and she was taken away from Sammy thanks to her mother, and she never got to live, she was just a kid, she didn't deserve any of what happened to her, she was too good for this world.

"I'm sorry, Cap," says Tony.

"Kid was too good for this world," is all Steve manages to say, and he stumbles to his feet and finds his way to the gym, and he lashes out all the pain and hurt and anger and goddamn unfairness and injustice of it all.

Because nothing is fair, goddammit.

She should've _lived_.

* * *

He spends the next week or so working himself to the bone at the gym, spends as much time as he can catching up, distracting himself by catching up on history. It's not very successful – the Holocaust the Cold War the Cuban Missile Crisis the Korean War the Vietnam War the Gulf War – so many _wars_ and blood and pain and death, and oh god, the Holocaust –

He didn't _know_. He never knew.

Should've been stopping the Nazis instead of Hydra.

And grief overwhelms him again, heart full of everything that he loved and lost and a world that was possibly even more broken than when he left it.

* * *

She's dead, Steve knows. Disappeared in Alaska seventy years ago. Never seen or heard of again. No way could she and her mother have survived on their own; no way could she have survived, even without her mother to look after.

Dead.

Long gone.

But there she is. Walking on the street towards him, her arm looped around a Chinese-looking boy's, large and bulky-looking and smiling down at her like she's the most beautiful thing in the world, and she is _alive_.

Rationally, Steve tells himself that this is not possible. This might be a granddaughter, or something. He's seen the file of Sammy Valdez's great-grandson; the resemblance is uncanny, but they're two very different people and he knows that. But she looks far too much like Hazel, this girl, though she's clearly a few years older. The eyes, the way she walks – though now she walks more bravely, he thinks, purpose in her step, more confidently and with more strength, and she walks more like a soldier – and those features he has carefully sketched out in his sketchpad, the same way he's sketched out everyone he remembers from his days in World War 2 –

It's not possible, he thinks.

Besides, Hazel died when she was thirteen, didn't she? There's no way –

The couple are walking towards him now, so close, and something twists in Steve's gut when her laugh carries on the wind because he _knows_ that laugh, remembers it from days in New Orleans and teaching a little girl how to draw, and he _knows_ those eyes, liquid gold that beams in the light and shines in the darkness, _true_ gold, not just shining gold in certain lights and not others, that's _molten_ gold in the same shape and size and the same expressiveness –

He can't stop himself.

"Hazel?" he says, and her head whips around and those golden eyes fall onto him and her mouth falls into a small 'o'.

"Mr Steve?" she says, in something like disbelief, molten-gold eyes widening in that familiar way he remembers and something snaps in him because she's here, she exists, she's _alive_ and she's breathing and walking and talking and he doesn't quite care right now why she's still a teenager.

"Yeah," he says, and it's getting difficult to breathe and the next thing he knows she has wrapped her arms around him and she is hugging him tightly, tightly, and his face is in her head of curly thick hair and she is clutching onto him tightly, same way that he's holding onto her: "Yeah, it's me, Hazel. It's Mr Steve."

Finally they break apart, and there is a wet patch on his shirt where tears have spilled onto them, but he doesn't care as he looks at her, looks at her properly. The boy next to her is standing tense, looking at Steve as if assessing whether he is a threat, but Steve can't quite care. She's standing in front of him, beaming, golden eyes wet with happy tears, smiling at him the same way she used to smile all those years ago.

"I don't understand," he says, finally. "You're still – you're still young, you're still a teenager – the files said you disappeared in Alaska years ago – "

"Files?" the boy tenses, and he looks worried, protective.

"I was looking for you," says Steve, looking back down at Hazel, who has taken the boy's hand in an effort to calm him: "I thought, even if everyone else I knew is dead, maybe you'd still be alive."

"I heard about you on the news," says Hazel, looking at him with her eyes wide: "I thought it was just a hoax, a stunt of some kind – "

Steve shakes his head: "No," he says. "I really was stuck in the ice for seventy years, until they found me. Happened after you disappeared."

"Oh," says Hazel, and there is silence for a moment; he doesn't know what to say, she doesn't know what to say, and all he can do is stand there, fully absorbing that she is real and solid and very much breathing and alive – then, after a moment, as if remembering her manners, she flushes and turns to the boy: "Um, Mr Steve, this is Frank Zhang, my boyfriend. Frank, this is Steve Rogers."

It takes Frank approximately two seconds to realise that this is, indeed, _Steve Rogers aka Captain America and Gods of Olympus Hazel you never told me you know Captain America!_

"We became friends when he and Mr Bucky saved me from a bunch of bullies," Hazel tells Frank, and adds, "He said a lot of things that helped make me who I am today," and she smiles at Steve, and his heart grows warm.

"I don't understand," Steve says, finally. "How are you still here, real, but still a teenager? You don't look a day older than seventeen!"

"Sixteen, actually," smiles Hazel, but her smile drops and she exchanges a look with Frank and then she says, with a slight hint of that timidity that she used to have in spades: "Mr Steve, I can't explain to you everything right now, but maybe – after I clear it – we could talk about it?"

She gives him a pleading look, and Steve relents.

Maybe he should be a bit more suspicious about the fact that a kid he knew back in the 1940s is standing right in front of him, just two years older than when they had first met. He thinks he should be a bit more suspicious. But she's a part of his life, beaming and bright and full of good memories and thoughts of Bucky and goodness and light even in the midst of destruction and war, and besides, he's just seen magic and alien invasions and too many other things he never thought was possible. Anything seems to be possible nowadays.

So he gives the two of them his number, and Hazel scribbles down what she tells him is Frank's number, because she doesn't own a phone of her own.

Steve thinks that's odd, but he doesn't really care. She is a part of his past and she is alive and she is real and she is still walking and talking and she isn't old and frail and tired – she lives and she jumps and she laughs with so much energy, she is warm and alive and real, she is a teenager, she has come right out of his past and she is something _familiar_.

"I know how difficult it is to adjust to different time periods," says Hazel, and Steve's eyes shoot to her face, searching, but all he can see is that same goodness and kindness in her that he's always known; and a strength that wasn't quite there before; she is stronger now, more willing to show her bravery and courage and emotions now, knows she is worthy of love and undeserving of prejudiced and suspicious and doubtful, paranoid hate. "If you ever need anything, just call. Frank and I have to get somewhere right now, we're already late, but – "

"We have to meet up," Steve insists, and Hazel nods. "We'll arrange something."

"We will," Hazel agrees, and next to her, Frank clears his throat a little and says, "We gotta go or Piper's gonna kill us."

"We'll meet up soon," promises Hazel, and her head turns back to look at him one last time even as Frank pulls her away, gently, firmly, reminding her about the time and saying, "Can you imagine what Valdez will say when he finds out you know Captain America personally?"

"Bye, Mr Steve!" she calls out, and he raises an arm and he calls back, "Bye, Hazel."

The name Valdez sounds familiar, Steve thinks, but he doesn't dwell on it, not as he sees the molten gold eyes finally turn away as they round the corner, obviously very late for their meeting, and he holds the piece of paper in his hand that holds the way to contacting Hazel.

She's here. A piece of his past, the girl with so much goodness and compassion, the girl who let bullies trample all over her because she thought she deserved it and never wanted any harm to come to them, who made the death and fighting and destruction and horrors of the war and all the killing seem somewhat worth it because there were more good people he was fighting for, more innocence and goodness he wanted to save and to always protect; the girl with a heart of gold and the eyes to match, seared permanently into his mind.

He isn't alone. He won't ever forget her.

Golden eyes are a difficult thing to forget.

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